Customer Reviews

Battletech 39: Sword and Fire (Twilight Of The Clans)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Of all the books of the Twilight of Clans series, this is for sure the most martial one. Sure, some of the other books really lacked mech combat, but in this case, mass didn't mean style. Okay, a point was to be made: Warfare is brutal, bloody and no sports and in order to justify Victor S-Davion's campaign of annihilation of CSJ, his message had to be delivered with such a slaughter (on both sides) on CSJ's homeworld. And the timeline of the fierce battle and the dynamics of such brutal fights are a good base to get the reader's attention. But, the way Gressman describes mech combat seriously lacks the originality and depths of other btech authors (like i.e. the early Stackpole warrior trilogy). Here it's simply a chaotic string of oftenly unrelated scenes of mech combat. This woulda been accetable if Gressman had stuck with a few main characters, but alas he more than once introduces combatants in a passage and never mentions the same character again, leaving the reader wondering what happened to them. Even worse, he neglects the fate of main characters and of complete mech units. For example Russou Howell, who had been built up as main protagonist in 2-3 of the former novels just gets 2 short appearances. Or, what happened to saKhan Brandon Howell, who was skilled enough to be the only CSJ leader not to completely fail at Tukayid (does Gressman read Btech source books?)? What impact did the IS' reserve units have after they got summoned to reinforce the 2 main groups? Etc... Questions over questions - and not every one gets (satisfactorily) answered in the short final passages when Victor's forces arrive and the battle is decided rather abruptly. Contrary to other reader's comments I liked Gressman's detailed logistical descriptions in 'The Hunters' and he was good at that. But here, I just got the impression that Gressman either had to hurry to finish the assault on Diana or that he simply lacks the skill to span a coherent story line for large scale mech combat. And that's what Btech is about: Mech combat. And therefore just 2 stars.

Well, Gressman is certainly improving which is a blessing. He still makes mistakes in here but they appear to be the result of tight deadlines leaving little time for proofreading, rather than his earlier factual mistakes and improbable events. Still, after reading this novel I feel it would have done wonders to compress his three novels into two. That way the obvious filler spaces would disappear and more thought put into whether an event was probable and/or really needed or just included to impress the readers in some way. The battles were generally much closer run things than before and even going in the Jaguars favour at times. Still, the number of troops that came back from the IS is surprisingly low (doesn't mesh with other sources) and with artillery blasting so many omnimechs and elementals to pieces, before the mech to mech battles have begun, I'm really wondering how the Jags suddenly are doing so well with such small numbers. Looks like over compensation for earlier easy IS victories. Yet all the battles do make SoW much more enjoyable than The Hunters with its long drawn out buildup. One more thing I did get annoyed at is how IS troops are written as almost all heart (Only the Nekekami proved to be coldblooded killers) while the Jaguars are almost always painted as complete bastards. The only tenderness exhibited by a Jaguar happened when an Elemental carried IlKhan Osis to an ambulance. A less black and white view of the people involved would have been nice. I hope that Gressman can turn into a good solid all around author since he does have the potential. At the moments his books are marred by some serious flaws which occasional bursts of brilliance can barely make up for. But these are only his first three books after all. Even Stackpole made some serious mistakes in his first trilogy.

I have been reading Sci-Fi, (Battletech in general) for many years. And, I think that this is the poorest example of Battletech writing since 'FAR COUNTRY' which i don't consider a Battletech novel at all.

Yup, this was the first Battletech book that I read. I was looking at the back and saw that Winston is the Eridani Light Horse General so I bought it. I'm one of the ELH in a couple of Mechwarrior leagues. This book was awesome but I thought it was a little slow in the beginning. But I guess it was necessary for the investigation of the Marshal's murder. Still, it left some loose ends... who really hired the assasin? The battles were really awesome. We'll just have to wait until the clans get their reinforcements -- the Inner Sphere warriors mainly fought solahmas and cadets.. we'll see how they'll stand against more capable warriors. The Jaguars paid for what they did to Turtle Bay!!! GO ELH!!!

This book was a little slow in arriving, but don't get your hopes up. Until the end of the story, Gressman's writing style leaves you in a near-catatonic state as he repeats the objective of Task Force Serpent about every three or four pages. This could have been done so much better, by maybe taking more than a paragraph to resolve the assasssination of book 3, and also by getting to the invasion much quicker. As soon as the troops land, Gressman proves he can write. Problem is, he's out of ink! Next time, Tommy Boy, spend a little more than a 3-page chapter on each separate task force. Oops, he didn't even do that! The St. Ives Lancers, the Kathil Uhlans, and for the most part the Com Guards, are completely left out of the narrative. Considering the 100 + pages of filler in this book, seven or eight more chapters would have improved this it immensely. Well, at least, after five books, something is starting to happen...

Thomas S. Gressman is a good and capable writer and shares Stackpole's gift for infusing the plot and his characters with life. The fall of the Smoke Jaguar Clan was handled a little flippantly but that is a very small drop in the ocean after all. I found nothing wrong with it. I do feel sad that the good people at FASA see fit to be so unbelievably biased as to wipe out a whole faction such as the Clans which admittedly are far more interesting than their Inner Sphere counterparts.

So far the best and most entertaining novel of the Twilight of the Clans series. The plot involving the investigations of Morgan's murder is excellent and the fights to conquer Diana by Task Force Serpent are decent battletech war tales. I would have wished a more effective defense by the remaining CSJ forces, but in view of the following book of the series, the Inner Sphere units needed to get out of the initial assault rather unscathed.

this book is realy cool because it shows how clan smoke jaguire tries to deal with the invading inner sphere attackers.I am a huge fan of battle tech(I have ALL the books,games,and r.p.g.s)and I think this is one of the best works ever produced by FASA!!!

This could have been a very good book but the author did a poor job of bringing the whole thing together. I want the next Stackpole book to come out.

The latest entry in the BT:Twilight of the Clans is a little slower than that of say, Mike Stackpole. Gressman is relatively new to this series and is a solid writer. I feel he will only improve if given a chance. I will not hesitate to buy another Gressman novel. The Twilight series has alot of potential and Mr. Gressman has to follow FASA's direction in this series so he has a "script" to follow. This allows for continuity and moves the BT universe in a specific direction.